WAVE-IT: Working Academics Value Excellence for International Teachers, starts of a bottom-up process of the implementation of 21st Century Competencies and Skills, focused on entrepreneurial, connective and the reflective practitioner in teacher education and schools. Looking for the capabilities and capacities of the children of today and the needs for tomorrow. Defining the competence and skills of a European Teacher and defining criteria for primary and secondary schools and their teachers on entrepreneurship and reflective teaching. A European teacher has to be prepared for the future and should have a more global vision on education. WAVE-IT is a strategic project within the European Teacher network (www.european-teachers.eu). Context/background WAVE-IT builds on a strong relationship with partner institutes and a good relationship with high-motivated teachers of primary and secondary schools, which became members of the European Teacher network. Collaboration during projects and reflection on activities are the keys in the learning processes within the European Teacher network. Saxion, university of applied education in the Netherlands, coordinates the network. WAVE-IT objectives: 1: Development of didactical strategies for entrepreneurial and connective teaching and education. 2: Development of critical thinking strategies to support reflective practice through collaboration and communication between teachers, learners, and academics. 3: Implementation of entrepreneurial and reflective competencies and skills in teacher education. 4: Implementation of the strategies to the education of children with higher increased learning support (refugees, socially excluded, with special learning needs). Number and profile of participants The partners of WAVE-IT are 4 institutes of teacher education and one participating primary/low secondary school. All institutes have chosen a forerunner school in their region, out of members of the European Teacher network. Participants are researchers, teachers of educational institutes, teachers of primary and secondary schools, students and technicians. Activities The participants work together on Intellectual outputs: • IO1: interactive resource: a set of practical recommendations and learning interventions to promote teacher entrepreneurship in primary and secondary schools and in teacher education. • IO2 interactive resource: adaptive teacher training material to support reflective practice through collaboration and communication between teachers, learners, and academics. The participants organize: • 1 in-service course for teachers and • 1 intensive programme higher education learners. Methodology WAVE-IT uses the structure of the facilities of the European Teacher network: • Organization: coordination, advisory board, evaluation, secretarial financial and technical support, • Communication: web site and newsletter, Facebook, Linked in, e-books and the Moodle system for online courses and • Labs for new activities on the European Teacher learning materials and courses. WAVE-IT strengthens the role of the national groups of the European Teacher network as disseminators. WAVE-IT develops an: • In-service course for teachers: the reflective practitioner (implementation of 21st Century education in primary and secondary schools, • Intensive course for students: Teachers4Future. Results WAVE-IT strengthens the profile of teaching professions by the development of 21st Century Skills, focused on entrepreneurship and reflective teaching. WAVE-IT develops practical recommendations for promoting teacher entrepreneurship through online collaboration and communication between teachers, students, researchers, and technicians. WAVE-IT enhances teachers’ reflective practice by means of developing adaptive teacher training material that capitalizes on the strengths of video-mediated reflection and feedback. WAVE-IT will operationalize strategies for entrepreneurial and reflective teaching in order for teachers to be able to monitor and reflect on the extent to which they engage in these effectual practices. The digital platform (for example smartphones or tablets) will be developed that allow teachers to report on the strategies for entrepreneurial and reflective teaching that occur in the context of their everyday teaching. Impact Teacher education institutes profit from working together with the schools and from working with each other in a transnational environment. Students and teachers of primary and secondary schools are participants in labs to develop together with teacher educators and researchers/specialists, learning strategies for 21st Century Skills and 2020 skills for teacher education and primary and secondary schools. The process of collaborative working is embedded in a professional continuum of teacher profession.
The project was focused on the creation of didactic materials for teachers and students of pedagogical fields in the field of implementing skills for the 21st century, developing competence for entrepreneurship and supporting the inclusion of pupils. The objectives of WAVE-IT were set as follows: 1: Finding appropriate didactic strategies for the development of the competence of (social) entrepreneurship in education, skills for the 21st century and their implementation in educational practice. 2: Promoting reflective practice through collaboration and communication between teachers, students and academics. 3: Implementation of strategies in the education of children with increased educational support needs (refugees, socially excluded, special education).
The WAVE-IT project has been developed over a long period of time in collaboration with partner universities and schools involved in the previous VOICES (The Voice of European TeacherS) project, which focused on the competences of the European teacher (http://www.european-teachers.eu/). The activities of the project are carried out within the European Teacher Network (www.european-teachers.eu). In the course of this project, the need to focus on the implementation of 21st Century Skills, the need to choose an appropriate approach to pupils with increased educational support needs, in the context of the influx of refugees into European countries since 2015, has emerged. In this context, we further focused on the promotion of entrepreneurship, specifically in the area of social entrepreneurship. We wanted to implement the knowledge from theory and practice in the education of future teachers and partly also non-teaching pedagogical staff. In the context of the outbreak of the SARS-Cov-19 pandemic and the follow-up in 2020, we were forced to adapt the content of the project to the conditions. We tried to do the same after the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022.